"A pack of bull sharks are seen scouring the sea floor while the boardriders who paddle across to South Stradbroke Island are blissfully unaware of what lies beneath." | Photo: Ian Banks/Gold Coast Bulletin

Yike: See the World’s Sharkiest Paddle!

You heard of South Straddie? You know the name, right? That man-made collection of often outrageously good beachbreaks on the north side of the Southport Seaway on Queensland’s Gold Coast?

In a north-west wind, and with even just a little swell, whee-baby.

Getting there ain’t as simple as parking a car, suiting up and paddling off the beach, howevs. Between you and the waves is a two hundred metre paddle across what is, according to rumour, a shark-filled body of water between the two rock groynes.

Options.

You either pay five bucks or whatever it is and get the ferry (con: you feel like a sissy to travel two hundred metres in a boat) or you take your panties off and jump in, dodge the fishing trawlers, and get there yourself.

I lived on that otherwise god-forsaken coast for a decade and, most mornings, I’d drive thirty minutes north to the seaway, dive in and get an hour of thin-lipped cabanas before work. Early in my tenure there, if I didn’t have a pal to paddle across with, I’d tail a couple of other surfers. Before long, I was solo, but still very scared.

Once, as a surf magazine prank, we made a pro surfer swim across the channel with a fish tied to his leg.

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The day the World Surf League told me to beat it!

It is day five of the Oi Rio Pro or at least I think it is. Much like Kelly Slater our coverage of the event has gone missing. It would be impossibly rude to make Longtom wake up in the middle of a Byron night to watch the world’s better surfers dance in Brazil and so this morning, after receiving a text from Nobel Prize winner Jamie Tworkowski* that Gerry Lopez was on the mic and performing admirably, I decided to take the contest duties upon myself.

I sat down on a corinthian leather stool, breathed deeply through my nose and pressed www.worldsurfleague.com into the browser and there I was, or almost because then I had to press the “watch” button. I thought, after pressing, that Adriano de Souza’s face would pop onto my screen but instead the above window and the words, “Just sign up to watch live. It’s free.” followed by the standard “Continue with Facebook” “Continue with Google” and then, inexplicably, “we won’t post anything without asking.”

Post what without asking? My mind whirled into Cambridge Analytica territory. What on earth does the WSL want to post? Personality quizzes for my friends? Pleas for help? No, it was already too stressful so I pressed the “Not Now” option nestled into the left corner.

This took me back to the beginning and I pressed watch and was again taken to the “Continue with Facebook” “Continue with Google” “we won’t post anything without asking.”

Again and again and again. The same loop. There was no way out and I smashed “Not Now” more vigorously each and every time, sweat starting to bead on my forehead. I’ve downloaded your app, WSL. I’ve given you the better part of my youth but you want more. Always more. Why can’t you listen to my “Not Now”? Why can’t you respect my body and my choices? Why is “Not Now” not really an option?

I finally gave up, exhausted, without any professional surfing to soothe my soul.

So. Who is doing good? Is Gerry Lopez a sweet addition to the team? What about Chris Cote? Who did Chris replace anyhow? Is Julian Wilson still in the Jeep Leaderboard Yellow Jersey? More questions to come.

* I once had dinner with Emily Ratajkowski. She was a fine conversationalist and I thought her and Jamie Tworkowski would cut a striking figure and that they should get married and hyphenate Jamie and Emily Ratajkowski-Tworkowski. I was drinking Moscow Mules at that dinner out of a paper straw.

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The Hawaiian John John Florence, who is eight-to-one to win in Brazil. Are these odds enough to tempt you? Turn a hundred into eight hundred? | Photo: WSL

Just in: USA Legalises Surf Betting!

If you live in America, you might have looked wanly at all the surf gambling ads buttressing this website. The offers have been almost too good to be true: free money to get you going (up to $500) and odds generous enough to make it worth your while having a swing.

But Australia only. The land of the free etc.

This damn stupid rule changed last night when the US Supreme Court made a decision that will allow the individual States to legalise sports gambling. The court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 that barred state-authorised sports gambling… with Nevada as the exception. Sports betting is worth over $199 billion per year in the US.

New Jersey wants to be the first (this actually came about from the major sports leagues suing the Govener of NJ), and Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and West Virginia are expected to quickly jump on the legal bookmaking wagon.

Not good news for Nevada as they took $4.8 billion worth of sports bets in 2017 and had the US monopoly for 26 years.

So what’s going to happen now is that States will have to work with professional sports leagues like the NBA and MLB on their demands for an “integrity fee” to be paid from all bets to the leagues. This fee is around 0.5% – 1% of the bet. The NBA and other leagues have defended their reasoning for the fee as a need to police the game from criminals looking to fix games, and implement compliance systems across their leagues.

Our friends at William Hill wants to be the first bookmaker to mine this lucrative vein of gold. They intend to offer sports betting in New Jersey locations as “soon as responsibly possible,” according to CEO Joe Asher. “We’re thinking in the realm of weeks.” They’re targeting the NBA Finals.

Soon, BeachGrit’s US audience will be able to join up to William Hill and receive our lovely bonus bet offer.

MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren told CNBC on Monday that it will be able to offer sports betting around the country “very quickly.”

“We have already established the architecture to deploy sports betting as soon as the states allow us to do that,” Murren said. “We have already the software. We have our mobile app called PlayMGM that is already activated in Nevada.”

Will the WSL, finally be able to take a seat alongside Adam Silver from the NBA and then NFL’s Roger Gooddell, NFL, to negotiate an integrity fee that will protect surfing from the perils of gambling?

Is this the river of gold that might save the WSL’s thirty million dollar investment? Internal sources tell us the WSL has already been in talks with at least one of Australia’s biggest gambling houses.

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Buy: Dion Agius’ Shipping Container House!

Do you dream of, one day, living in a sub-tropical paradise where everyone is young and beautiful and sex positive? And with waves that have crystalline lips and that crash onto powder white sand?

This place exists and it is called Byron Bay.

If you’ve a little cash in the bank or a generous line of credit, therefore, you might want to make an offer on the pro surfer Dion Agius’ “Forest Bungalow”, a shipping container bungalow midway between Byron Bay and Suffolk Park.

Dion, who is thirty-three years old (“Crazy! I can’t believe it! Where did those years ago?’) and lives alone in a little house in north-east Tasmania, has put the property he bought four years ago on the market last night and is asking for “expressions of interest.”

This stunning 1289m2 block comes with approved council DA plans for a beautiful architecturally designed home. Given the size of the land STCA there is potential for subdivision. The land currently hosts a very cool converted shipping container.

Treed crown reserve on both the north and eastern sides enhances the appeal and privacy, as does the beautiful established trees and tropical gardens that are well positioned along the boundaries giving you your own private forest home to an abundance of local birds.

The little house Dion built.

Earlier today, I spoke to Dion about the sale. It is a rare thing to get Dion on the telephone. There is no reception in his little wooden cabin in the town of Scamander at the mouth of the Scamander River between Saint Helens and Saint Mary and he has to walk down to the river to make or take a call.

He hadn’t surfed for a month since busting an ear drum during a trip to Indonesia.

“It was horrible. I slapped my head super hard,” he says.

I was living in LA with my buddy who ended up passing away and it got to the point where I was living in this shithole traffic going to showings and thinking, ‘What the fuck am I doing? This is horrible.’ It made me revaluate my life. It’s not about making a quick buck. I found a spot down here, forty acres on a river, no one around.”

Dion moved to Tasmania after two years in Los Angeles selling Epohke sunglasses that he describes as “the worst two years of my life. It changed my whole perspective on life. I was living with my buddy who ended up passing away and it got to the point where I was living in this shithole traffic going to showings and thinking, ‘What the fuck am I doing? This is horrible.’ It made me revaluate my life. It’s not about making a quick buck. I found a spot down here, forty acres on a river, no one around.”

His plan when he bought the Byron property in late 2014 for $610,000 was to winter in Byron and summer in Tasmania, where he grew up and lived until he was fourteen. As it transpired, after he built his shipping container studio it was booked out so often he could never find a slot.

Dion says he doesn’t particularly want to sell the Byron house but, well, property is going pretty nuts in town and he figures why not cash in before the boom evaporates.

“I haven’t put a price on it. The real estate agent and I are just feeling it out, seeing what people are thinking. The thing is, I love the block. It backs onto crown land and the previous owners planted a little tropical forest on it. That was the reason I bought it so, for me, it’s worth quite a bit. I looked at a lot of other spots but I didn’t find anything as special.”

The money would be useful. He’s doing up his house (He’ll be slinging VJ lining on the walls and installing lights after he hangs up) and is trying to convince buddies to build their own shacks on his forty acres, “a little getaway commune with my friends,” he says. “I want to create a gallery, a studio, do events, festivals, fun stuff.”

As it is, he hangs by himself most of the time, although his parents are fifteen minutes drive away and some of his best friends from primary school are nearby, although family commitments usually keep ’em busy.

“I surf or go skate. And I have space and trees,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about.”

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All things are possible with Kelly as your guide!

Revealed: The ultimate Surf Ranch experience!

Kelly Slater’s delightful girlfriend Kalani Miller posted a video on Instagram a few hours ago that, I believe, reveals the uppermost echelon on Surf Ranch experiences. In it, she can be seen crouched on the middle/front of a longer, wider board. Kelly Slater stands behind her and deftly steers the thing into and out of a small but seemingly very satisfying barrel.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BiuZCOrBcQB/

And there we have it. The very exclusive ceiling.

Now, as the World Surf League has brought Surf Ranch online we’ve seen a few different pricing options. We’ve seen $115,000.00 for a two-day getaway. We’ve seen $9788.00 for a one-hour session. What then can we guess the tandem barrel with Kelly Slater will cost? Kelly’s steady hand on your shoulder. His calm voice in your ear saying, “Crouch down. Feel the rhythm of my nature.”

How much?

I would imagine, with the precedent that has been set, this experience could top $500,000.00. Of course it would include lunch and transportation too and from Surf Ranch from the Tachi Palace Casino and Hotel. I would imagine there would be many takers in Silicon Valley. Dot com folk trying to one-up the experiences of their peers. Also, I think for $250,000.00 Surf Ranch could provide other notable surf celebrities like Kalani Robb as barrel guides.